Bunny Ha Ha: Tesco Entertains With Easter Ad
Bunny Ha Ha: Tesco Entertains With Easter Ad
When it comes to UK advertising, Easter is Christmas’ poor relation. Sure, grocery brands make Easter ads but they get a fraction of the attention Christmas ads do, and the biggest Easter campaigns tend to be from chocolate brands.
But shouldn’t Easter get more love? It isn’t the frenzy of consumer activity Christmas is, with no Easter presents and Easter parties, but it’s still a four-day weekend at a time of year when people want a boost after some long, cold months. There’s an opportunity for brands to join in with that mood. Two factors have made it difficult. First, the religious element is stronger. Second, Easter’s mobile dates make it trickier to plan around. Still, with chocolate eggs on the shelves from early January, the public are well primed for Easter by the time it comes round.
So it’s good to see this campaign from Tesco celebrating what’s great about Easter as a holiday with the same tongue-in-cheek comic style they used for last year’s Christmas ad. Chocolate plays a major role, as you’d expect, but there’s also buns, bunnies, family get-togethers and good weather (sort of).
The vibe is very British and very jaunty, a feelgood ad that’s happy to feel quirky without ever being outlandish. Viewers gave it a strong positive response, with a 4.4-Star score coming in well above the average Tesco ad on the Test Your Ad platform. The brand’s recent move away from a pure focus on its Food Love Stories campaign to also make more all-embracing ads for special occasions (like Easter and Mother’s Day) continues to make audiences happy. The ad also scores exceptionally well on short-term Spike and Brand Fluency ratings.
Tesco – and agency BBH – have definitely caught the right mood for Easter as a more relaxed kind of holiday, one made for fun and gentle indulgence. For instance, the peak of audience happiness comes when we see a massive tower of Hot Cross Buns. There are lots of human touches to get the broad-beam attention of your right brain, too – dialogue, visual jokes, and a Pointer Sisters soundtrack from 1982. Which also happens to be the year BBH was founded, and this is a fine addition to their long legacy of entertaining, big-thinking, populist ads.